This disclosure is based upon, and claims priority from, French patent application No. 99-07060, filed Jun. 3, 1999, the contents of which are incorporated herein by reference.
This invention relates to the installation of application programs furnished by means of an additional chip card that can be inserted in a terminal. For instance, the terminal can be a mobile radio telephone terminal including a first card for the identification of the subscriber and communications with a telecommunication network, as well as an additional chip card reader.
In a cellular GSM-type radio telephone network, provision is made for supplying the subscriber with application services based on the execution of application programs within the SIM chip card. These services are performed via a standardized technology, commonly called the SIM Application Toolkit. A particular functional feature, called pro-activity, makes it possible for the SIM cardxe2x80x94while the program is being runxe2x80x94to address requests to the outside world: the terminal, the subscriber, and the network.
For example, such application programs comprise menus for consulting a bank server and conducting banking transactions from the terminal at a distance. The development of added-value service applications executed in the SIM card necessitates means for the distribution and maintenance of these applications during the subscription. This is possible by personalizing the SIM card with suitable programs prior to its being sent to the subscriber or by remotely loading via radio or by directly loading these programs in the SIM card at a point of sale.
The personalization of the SIM card is constraining since it requires the advance fixation of the service and the application. It is complex: for any specific operator, as many personalization batches must be created as there are types of service.
Remote loading of application programs via radio, during the lifetime of the SIM card, is currently not in use; the available transmission channels are not suitable due to their low transmission rate.
The third possibility is also constraining since all of the points of sale must be equipped with the means necessary for interfacing the SIM cards with the program loading device.
The prior technique also provides an additional chip card which is distinct from the SIM card and which can be inserted in the terminal or which can be connected to the terminal of the SIM card by an outside reader. The second card is controlled by a program that is being carried out in the SIM card. The terminal plays a transparent role by simply transmitting the commands prepared by the SIM card to the second card. This exchange of commands is intended to develop services that will employ all types of chip cards. For example, the second card can be a bank card offering remote payment services on the mobile terminal.
The second card becomes a way of distributing applications by transporting programs that perform value-added services, such as those that one can currently find in the SIM card.
Several possibilities deriving directly from the current application of SIM Toolkit commands can be foreseen.
According to the first possibility, the application program is remotely loaded from the second card into the SIM card through software in the multiple card reader of the Toolkit application, so that the program may be executed in the SIM card.
According to a second possibility, the program is executed in the second card The program is launched on the command of the SIM card which then leaves the initiative for exchanges of commands and responses, for the execution of the program, to the terminal which communicates directly with the second card.
According to a third possibility, the program is remotely loaded from the second card into the terminal and is executed in an execution software environment initially implemented for this purpose in the terminal.
The object of the invention is to install an application program in an additional card by using only those types of exchanges which are available on the level of the terminal and of the first card.
To this end, a process for preparing the execution of a program, typically a proactive program, and executing the program in a second chip card, introduced into a terminal, in addition to a first chip card, containing data related to the owner of the first card, is characterized in that the second card communicates with the terminal through exchanges of commands and responses between the two cards, relayed via exchanges of commands and responses between the first card and the terminal.
Thus, according to the invention, all typically proactive exchanges between the terminal and the second card are performed through the first card which, as far as the terminal is concerned, appears as the executor of the program.
In case the terminal is a mobile radio telephone terminal, the first card is a SIM card. In contrast to the second possibility that can be envisaged as mentioned above, it is not necessary, according to the invention, to provide for a second interface between the terminal and the second card, supporting the SIM Toolkit protocol. According to the invention, a SIM Toolkit protocol interface is installed between the two cards, and the terminal plays the role of a transparent relay.
In the detailed description given below, the terminal is connected to a telecommunication network, such as a radio telephone network. However, the terminal can be an autonomous device, or it can be linked to a network, such as the switched telephone network or a digital network with service integration or a specialized or private data transmission telephone network.
To check compatibility between the second card and the terminal, the process involved in the invention comprises the reading of characteristics for the execution of the program in the second card, then the first card, in response to an introduction of the second card into a reading medium connected to the terminal, and an analysis of the characteristics in comparison to the material and software capacities of the first card and/or the terminal to reject the second card when said characteristics are incompatible with at least the terminal.
During the preparations for execution, the process may comprise a phase for the transmission of software and material characteristics of the terminal from the first card to the second card to adapt the second card to the terminal.
During the preparations for the execution of a program, the process involved in the invention comprises preferably also the following phases:
reading, from the first card, a second menu into the second card;
combining, in the first card, the second menu with a first menu, contained in
the first card, in a general menu;
transmitting the general menu from the first card to the terminal in order to
replace the first menu with the general menu in the terminal.
In this fashion, the subscriber can access, via a single menu, all of the application programs contained in the two cards.
According to a variation, in place of the combination phase, provision is made for a phase to replace a determined item in the first menu with the second menu so as to form the general menu.
As for the execution of the program, the process involved in the invention may comprise the following phases:
transmitting a program identifier from the terminal to the first card;
reading, in the first card, the place of program location corresponding to the
identifier;
executing the program via proactive session in the first card if the program is
located in the first card; and
executing the program via proactive session in the second card if the program
is located in the second card.
Thus, when it comes to the execution of a program in the second card, each command or response is run through the first card.